WEIGHING OPTIONS – Barnstable school committee vice chairman Patrick Murphy listens to school personnel, parents and residents during public comment at the Jan. 27 meeting, at which the committee voted to relocate the Marstons Mills Horace Mann Charter Public School to the Hyannis East building.

Support for charter contingent upon support for relocation to Hy East

Change continued to be the name of the game as the Barnstable school committee took more steps this week toward establishing a firm budget plan for FY2010 aimed at addressing a $6 million shortfall.

After voting last week to restructure grades across the district and close the Cotuit and Marstons Mills elementary school buildings, the committee voted at its Jan. 27 meeting to close Hyannis East Elementary School as a contract school and relocate the Marstons Mills East Horace Mann Charter Public School to the Hy East building, while closing the Osterville Elementary building.

The committee also voted to rescind the renewal of the MMEHMCPS charter should the board opt not to support the move. Whether the charter school makes the move to Hyannis is a decision for its board of trustees.

Originally, school committee chairman Ralph Cahoon requested on behalf of the committee via e-mail that the board inform the committee of its willingness to relocate to the Hyannis East site prior to the Jan. 27 school committee meeting.

The board voted Jan. 26 to delay its decision in order to review environmental and health reports regarding the Hyannis East building.

“We made the…motion to request the Hyannis East building health and safety records be provided to the board of trustees prior to any decision being made to relocate [the school],” said Janelle D’Aprix, chair of the MMEHMCPS board. “We need this information in order to make a fully informed decision.”

D’Aprix said that the board will hold a special meeting Feb. 2 at 6 p.m. at the school to discuss the relocation. Meanwhile, the board votee to amend the charter from K-4 to K-3.

The school committee’s votes came following another lengthy meeting, with a number of people expressing concerns about the safety of the Hyannis East building.

“Rumors that Hyannis East was making people sick certainly made me question the safety of that particular building,” said Melissa Caughey of Osterville.

Andy Gauthier, a teacher at the Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School with a son at MMEHMCPS, also had anxieties. “I don’t want my son there,” he said. “I don’t think any student should be in a sick school.”

On the flip side, Hyannis East school council member Wendy Lithwin noted that in 2005, following an air quality issue that forced the school’s then -rincipal, Karen Stonely, to move to another building, the building underwent a deep cleaning that cost more than $200,000. The school’s carpet was removed, walls repainted, floors retiled, and its ventilation system updated.

Jeff Morassi, president of the Barnstable Teacher’s Association whose son attends the preschool at Barnstable High School, also spoke in support of Hyannis East’s safety.

“I love my son just as much as any of these people do,” he said. “I’d have no trouble sending him there.”

Tom Larrabee, principal of Hyannis East, also offered his thoughts. “An awful lot of work has been done at Hyannis East in recent years,” he said. “Certainly no school is perfect. There are minor issues in any building that you might go into.”

Marina Brock of the Barnstable County Department of Health said that the school had originally been inspected following specific complaints, which she understood were addressed in the subsequent cleaning and renovations at the school.

Brock said that no complaints have been filed since 2005, when a report she had written concluded that there were no major issues at the school and that many air quality problems were the result of classroom clutter and lack of knowledge by the staff about the heating system.

Grenier agreed. “If you put a whole bunch of stuff on top of the unit ventilator…then dust mites collect and dust mites are an allergen,” she said. “Marina Brock said that was probably one of our biggest problems with air quality.”

Grenier said that a substantial town-funded capital improvement project to renovate the Hyannis East heating system is planned pending the outcome of the proposed budget.

Regardless of what the MMEHMCPS board decides, another of Barnstable’s school buildings must close in order to meet the $6 million deficit.

“Everybody’s wondering where the fat is,” said committee member Patrick Murphy. “It’s the buildings. We have more seats than children.”

Murphy backed the relocation of MMEHMCPS to Hyannis East, believing that in the long run it will offer greater rewards to the children in Barnstable.

“Effectively, I’m closing both my children’s schools,” he said. “But the other side of it is that there is a huge upside to saying that…we’ve actually done something extraordinary by placing a charter program, giving parents choice, in a section of town that needed it. The potential reward to the entire town of Barnstable could be extraordinary if all these people who’ve been saying how supportive they are of this charter actually mean it.”

School committee member Dr. Debra Dagwan, who opposes the closing of Hyannis East, also lent support to the relocation of the charter school.

“I’m thrilled that MME would even consider it,” she said. “I am in favor of, and am thrilled, that my support…is to ask MME to come over to Hyannis East. I think it’s a future for those children. I think it’s going to benefit your children as well as the children from that area.”

Dagwan also suggested, however, that the district begin seriously considering consolidating its students.

“I think in a few years one of the things we’re looking at is that we need to move away from community schools,” she said. “Hopefully we’re looking at building an elementary school that will bring kids together from all the communities instead of having them separated the way they are now.”

Committee member Tom McDonald had reservations about a relocation to Hyannis East and was the only no vote on the committee.

“I have wrestled with this,” he said. “There is no magic answer. I keep asking myself, ‘In the long run, what is going to be better?’ I believe that moving the charter to Hyannis East is the best decision in the short run. I do not believe in the long run it is.”

Cahoon expressed concern that a forced move could create problems among the MMEHMCPS staff.

“My concern is that if we say that we’re moving MME to the Hyannis East building, that a lot of staff people might decide not to go with the charter,” he said. “If it’s something that the majority of the staff says, ‘Yeah, we’re going and we’re gonna do the best for all the kids there,’ then I don’t have a problem with it.”

Once the MMEHMCPS board makes its decision, the school committee will be able to move forward either with a more concrete budget or with deliberations as to which school should close.